An essential pillar of democracy is openness. There is no way that
people can meaningfully participate in government, even if only by
voting for representatives, if they do not have access to accurate
information related to government operations. This was well
understood by the founders of the US and embedded in the Bill of
Rights. Conversely, a salient characteristic of undemocratic systems
of all types, such as Czarist Russia, the Soviet Union, and Nazi
Germany is a high degree of governmental secrecy.

The standard excuse for the suppression of governmental information
is national security. In practice, it is improperly used in most
situations. I.e., there is no legitimate reason for keeping secret
the great majority of information classified secret by the
government. Secrecy is used to conceal abuse of power, illegality,
corruption, incompetence, and waste. A common instance of misuse of
secrecy is when government officials make statements to reporters on
controversial matters under the condition that they not be
identified in the published stories. Below, I discuss how secrecy is
being misused in the US. But first, consider when secrecy does make
sense.

Justifiable Secrecy

There are situations where secrecy is clearly
appropriate. These are cases where revealing the information is
likely to have significant negative effects, and unlikely to confer
significant legitimate benefits. Examples are:

Sealed bids for a government contract.

Passwords or other information required to access personal records
of individuals.

Identities of secret agents.

Details of weapons systems and military operations plans .

Bargaining positions and strategy pertaining to ongoing or
anticipated international treaty negotiations.

Sometimes there are both positive and negative consequences of
exposure of information. For example, people required to testify as
witnesses to accidents or crimes, might be compelled to reveal
private information relevant to their credibility. Or information
essential to revealing incompetence or corruption in the development
of a new weapons system might also be useful to an enemy in devising
means for countering that system. In such cases, decisions must be
made as to priorities.

National Security Secrets

At first, it may seem obvious that scientific and engineering
developments that might have significant military applications,
ought to be kept secret, so as to prevent actual or potential enemy
countries from exploiting them for the same ends. But a closer look
suggests that, even in the military world, secrecy is often
counterproductive. If important new ideas with possible military
applications are shrouded in secrecy to hide them from foreign
scientists and engineers, then they will be less likely to come to
the attention of Americans who might be able to utilize them. The
detrimental effect is often increased since, if the US is in the
lead with respect to some particular technology, Americans are more
likely to be able to use "secret" information in that area than
would their rivals in other countries. So restricting the
dissemination of such information may hinder the US more than its
opponents [Unger].

An example of an absurd invocation of military secrecy is the 1984
case in which a civilian navy intelligence analyst received a two
year prison sentence for selling US satellite photos of a Soviet
aircraft carrier to the British publication, Jane's Fighting Ships
[Wikipedia]. There was no suggestion
that espionage was involved.

Perhaps even more absurd, and certainly more serious, is a 2011
instance in which the Department of Defense first classified the
criteria for holding detainees at the Bagram detention center in
Afghanistan, then released the information in response to a Freedom
of Information Act request from the ACLU, and then, in an effort to
put the genie back into the bottle, demanded that the document be
treated again as secret [ACLU]!

An important example of a "national security" secret is the federal
budgets for intelligence agencies of all types. We are talking here
of tens of billions of dollars annually. The budgets for such
entities as the CIA, NSA, the National Counterterrrorism Center, and
many more, are shrouded in secrecy. In 2010, the annual total was
revealed to exceed 80 billion
dollars [Dilanian]. Keeping agency budgets
secret helps cover up incompetence, abuse of power, and corruption.

Perhaps related to the growth of intelligence budgets is the fact
that a major portion of US intelligence is now carried out by
private contractors [Shorrock]. In 2007 it
was stated that 70% of the classified intelligence budget was spent
on private contractors and that about 60% of CIA employees were
private contractors. Apart from providing opportunities for big
league waste and corruption, the use of private companies in the
operations carried out by intelligence agencies, which includes
interrogation of prisoners, and analysis of information, raises
serious civil liberties concerns [Murphy].

Misuses of Secrecy

Following is a sampling of instances where national security was
used a a pretext for concealing bad governmental behavior.

A set of photographs showing shocking abuse of prisoners in Iraq
and Afghanistan is being suppressed by the Obama administration on
the ground that releasing it might stimulate retaliation against
Americans [Romero]. This act of censorship
clearly is related to the presidential decision not to prosecute, or
even to investigate, the higher-ups of the preceding administration
who were responsible for this despicable behavior. The implicit
argument here is that revealing an atrocity is more harmful than
committing it.

A former FBI agent who was active for about eight years in
anti-terrorist activities, including service as an interrogator,
wrote a book exposing the government's torture program, which he
considered immoral and ineffectual. The CIA acted to prohibit
publication of large parts of the book, despite the fact that the
great bulk of that material was already in the public domain, and
there seemed to be little likelihood that any of the book's material
actually qualified for legitimate secrecy
status [Greenwald-1].

Another use of secrecy related to torture is the argument made to
deny access to the courts to people who were kidnapped by US
government agents and sent to countries where they were
tortured. Both the Bush and Obama administrations have argued that
the victims of such treatment (termed extraordinary rendition) could
not seek redress in the courts because the resulting litigation
would expose state secrets [NYT]. It is important
that, in these cases, the government did not simply ask that
certain very security-sensitive evidence be suppressed, but rather
that the cases be summarily dismissed. And the courts (at least the
Supreme Court) have acquiesced.

A similar use of the "state secrets" argument was to block law
suits by Muslims (two Americans and an Egyptian) claiming they were
singled out as targets of a sweeping FBI surveillance
program [Gerstein].

The Obama administration is keeping secret how it is interpreting
certain features of the Patriot Act to collect information about
Americans [Nakashima]. It denied a request
by two senators to explain.

About a decade ago, a CIA agent and his family became ill as a
consequence of being assigned to housing in a mold-contaminated
building, part of a military facility he was assigned to
investigate. When the CIA denied responsibility, he brought suit in
federal court. The Justice Department invoked the "State Secrets
Privilege" and the judge summarily dismissed the case and ordered
the agent and his family not to discuss
it [Savage].

A request for documents pertaining to the proposed wording of a
treaty on intellectual property rights was recently denied by the
Executive Office of the President on the grounds that the
information is classified in the interest of national
security [Love]. The information is available to
numerous foreign governments and to lobbyists for various
industries.

One of the most bizarre secrecy incidents is one where, during the
cold war, the US government apparently felt compelled to outdo the
masters of secrecy, the Soviet Union. In 1976, the distinguished
Soviet physicist, L. I. Rudakov, toured the US, speaking at several
government facilities including the Lawrence Livermore
Laboratory. He presented his latest ideas on electron beam fusion (a
topic pertinent to hydrogen bombs). After each of his talks, the
host laboratories were instructed by Washington not to discuss what
he had told them [Metz]. We can only speculate
about the rationale for this strange action to protect Soviet
secrets, as the guidelines for governmental decisions dealing with
secrecy are themselves generally secret.

The traditional way that important information unjustifiably
classified as secret is brought out into the open is via the action
of conscientious government employees, often called
whistle-blowers. In line with the trend toward increased government
secrecy, the current administration has been vigorously working to
identify and criminally prosecute government
whistle-blowers [Greenwald-2].

Staggering Numbers

Since the end of WW II the use of secrecy by the US government has
proliferated at a wild rate. In 1970, a distinguished DoD committee
chaired by Frederick Seitz and including Edward Teller produced a
report on secrecy that recommended measures be taken to reduce the
amount of classified material by
90% [Seitz]. It apparently had little
effect. Nor did a 1997 report by a Senate committee chaired by
Patrick Moynihan, which also deplored excessive
secrecy [Moynihan].

The number of classification decisions made in 2001 was a whopping
8.7 million. This number increased to about 54.9 million in 2009,
and then increased by about 40% to roughly 76.8 million (a record)
in 2010. About 2.4 million people are cleared to see classified
material, and, of these, about 854,000 are cleared for
top-secrets. The government's Information Security Oversight Office
estimated that security classification activities cost the executive
branch over $10.17 billion in 2010, and cost industry an additional
$1.25 billion [German].

One important driving force propelling the explosive growth of
secrecy is that it is much easier to criticize the release of a
particular piece of information than it is to show that classifying
it secret is harmful. So, from the point of view of the bureaucrat,
the "safest" decision is to classify. Similarly, there is minimal
motivation to declassify "secrets", even when the passage of
time has eliminated any need for secrecy (assuming it ever existed).

Another factor is that politicians and bureaucrats have learned how
to use secrecy to promote many objectives having nothing to do with
national security. Control of the release of information is a
valuable political tool. It can be very useful for biasing the
outcome of a policy debate, quashing a law suit, making a political
ally look good, or making an opponent look bad, concealing a
blunder, hiding wasteful expenditures, and covering up corruption.

The Future of Governmental Secrecy

It would be nice to be able to point to progress with respect to
curbing governmental secrecy. Sadly, this just can't be done. All
indications are that it is growing like a malignant cancer. Secrecy
in the US is facilitating, and is facilitated by, the permanent
state of war and the continual erosion of civil liberties. The two
major parties are equally responsible, tho the Democrats pretend
otherwise [Strassel]. It is interesting that
the same government that is concealing more and more of its
activities from the public, is also, to a growing degree, snooping
on the private affairs of the citizenry, stripping away traditional
rights of privacy.